by Susan Isaacs
To tell the truth, she wouldn’t have minded having him. Who wouldn’t, with his big blue eyes and those long, straight eyelashes and a pair of shoulders like a bull? And he was dying for her, just dying, and she could feel whenever he held her that he had a set of family jewels that would make other guys green with jealousy. She liked to keep him that way, all fired up and ready. She’d stand behind him in a store or someplace and rub her boobies against his back until a soft groan would break from him.
Sometimes she could see tears in his eyes, he wanted her so much. And it would have been easy. Instead of pushing his hand away and saying “Please, Richard,” she could let him get a fast feel, diddle the nipple she knew was his goal. After all this time, it wouldn’t feel so bad, that rough pressure. But the more he pleaded with her to say yes, the easier it was to say no. Because that’s what Richard really wanted. He wanted a woman who wasn’t easy, a woman who would be a self-possessed, respectable wife. And Sally was no Patsy.
“No, Richard.”
“Please. Just on top. I swear, Sally—”
“I can’t. Don’t you understand? If I lower my standards, I might as well do everything.”
“Sally, just for one minute.”
“No!”
Two nights later, after knowing her for three weeks, Richard Heissenhuber asked Sally Tompkins to marry him.
It was agonizing but courteous. “More tea, Sally?” Anna Heissenhuber asked, leaning forward toward her flowered tea-pot, which would impress anyone who knew anything about china because it was Wedgwood, but this—this creature wouldn’t know about that. She wouldn’t know about anything fine or decent or even polite. She’d plopped three cubes of sugar into her tea and stirred like she was mixing cement and then left the spoon right there in the cup while she drank. Anna glanced at Carl, nearly frantic, but all he could do was stare as Sally narrowly missed gouging out her eye with the handle of the spoon.
“No more tea, thank you, Mother Heissenhuber.”
And Richard. Richard sat there, all big eyes and little smiles, as if this trollop were a Vanderbilt. With her dark, oily skin and red lipstick that smeared on her teeth and that dress—a milkmaid’s costume, ridiculous except it was so tight she was bursting out of it. And Richard looking at her like she was Little Mary Sunshine and not what she was, a strumpet, a Jezebel who would drag him into her own filth.
Anna lifted the plate of shortbread and offered it to her husband. His lips were as pale as his skin. “Carl?” He shook his head. He looked as bad as she felt. Anna moved the plate to the side, toward the tramp, but kept her eyes on Carl. She mumbled to him in the German she had not used since she escaped her parents’ house. Her husband hung his head in agreement.
It hadn’t been the best time in her life, so Sally tried hard not to think about it, but she had spent the first fourteen years of her life on Ludlow Street. And if you lived on Ludlow Street you spoke Yiddish, and if you knew Yiddish you could figure out German and you knew what this Nazi bitch was saying: that she was a bum. But naturally she couldn’t show she understood. Well, fuck her and the horse she rode in on. Sally leaned forward to put down her cup, giving the old man an eyeful of the best titties he’d ever seen—his eyes nearly bugged out of his head—and turned to her future mother-in-law, smiling. “May I see the house, Mother Heissenhuber? I’d just love to see the home Richard grew up in.”
“Why him?” Carl demanded. Outside the light was turning pearly and soft, a prelude to dusk, but inside it was dark, harsh, like hell. “Why Richard? We’re not wealthy. She must have seen that.”
“But his potential,” Anna said. “He could rise in the bank. Be a vice-president.” She sighed. “But tramps don’t care about potential.”
“Maybe he’s right,” Carl said. “Maybe she’s just a little flamboyant. An actress.”
“Actress, my eye. A slut is what she is. You saw that as well as I did. ‘Where are your parents?’ Dead. ‘Any other family?’ Yes, in England. ‘Oh, where in England?’ And then you saw her, you saw what she did. Looked up at the ceiling, like an answer was written there, but it wasn’t and she obviously couldn’t think of anything, so she looks back and blinks and says London. Smiles that smile and says, Oh, Mother Heissenhuber, there are Tompkinses all over London. Of course, now with the war coming they won’t be able to come over for the wedding. I’ll miss them so. Especially Aunt Mary.” Anna gazed at her husband. “But why Richard? Why our son? It makes no sense.”
They sat on the glider on the front porch of Knauer’s Hostelry for Young Ladies. Sally took Richard’s hand and covered it with small kisses. Then she ran her tongue over it and licked between his fingers. “I’m going to buy my trousseau tomorrow,” she said. “Nightgowns. Very, very sheer.”
“Do you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband, to love, honor, and cherish until death do you part?” Sally said she did and raised her head, crowned with a white hat with a three-foot-long ostrich plume—she knew it was stunning—to gaze into Richard’s shining eyes. She only had eyes for Richard, although she realized the City Hall clerk thought she was a real peach, all dolled up in that expensive chapeau and a white linenette sheath. It was really the perfect wedding dress for her because it was pure white but cut tight enough to display exactly what Richard was going to get. Without looking cheap. And Richard had said the contrast between the white dress and her dark skin was the stuff that poetry was made of. He was always saying romantic things like that.
And doing romantic things, like handing her a pink carnation one night and wrapped around it was a fifty-dollar bill, and when her mouth dropped open he said, “I know you don’t have parents to buy you a wedding dress, so please let me. I want to be your family, Sally.”
He’d been grateful she’d been willing to have a civil ceremony. When his mother, between nearly clenched teeth and pulled-tight lips, had asked if she would like to meet their minister, Dr. Babcock, Sally had said, “I’m sorry, Mother Heissenhuber. I just can’t get married in a Presbyterian ceremony. I was raised as an Episcopalian and I just wouldn’t be comfortable.” Sally must have seen his mother’s eyes ice over even more because she added, “I do so hope I’m not offending you.”
His parents refused to see Sally’s depth and goodness and instead focused on her clothes or her makeup or the way she crossed her legs. They could not accept the fact that she was an artiste. He had never seen them like that, so narrow and unfair. And each time he defended her, their rage billowed, until the entire house seemed to emit an acrid smell.
But he had fought them, for the first time in his life, and he was relieved not to have a church wedding because then he would have had to ask his father to be his best man.
He had no friend to fill the role. He had considered his boss at the bank, Mr. Forsyth, or a fraternity brother from college, Bill Beidemaier, whom he sometimes saw on the bus in the morning, and then thought of their response: “Yes, glad to, Richard” or “Sure. Be honored.” But he knew they would then realize his friendless status and would stand for him with resignation and contempt. He had never been the outgoing type, and it dismayed him when Sally demanded, “When am I going to get a chance to meet the guys and gals in your social circle, sweetheart?” She seemed to think he was the toast of Cincinnati; he didn’t know how to tell her that after his first week at the bank, no one had asked him to go out for lunch.
But as he bent down to kiss his bride, he knew his luck had changed. Life would be better.
From the moment Sally Heissenhuber emerged from the bathroom of the honeymoon suite of Hoosier House in French Lick, Indiana, her complexion aglow from shyness or rouge, it was a magnificent wedding night. Her hair, blue-black in the dim lamplight, spilled over her shoulders. Through the translucence of her white silk nightgown, Richard could see the exuberant rose-tipped breasts and the dark flower of hair between her thighs.
He was out of his blue and white striped pajamas as fast as his trembling hands would allow. Sally uttered a barely a
udible “Oh, boy.” After all those years of floppy-fleshed comedians and unwashed trumpet players and pallid patrons of burlesque, she was embraced by a tall, strong young man who cried out not “Fuck me, baby” but “I love you” and “You’re so beautiful” as he stroked her over and over, as if memorizing her shape.
“Oh, Richard.”
“Oh, Sally.”
For her, it was better than she thought it would be. Although he touched her with too much awe, like he was feeling up the Statue of Liberty, he appreciated her. He let out deep, throaty cries of pleasure. His body was warm and smelled clean. Her only fear, that she couldn’t pull off the virgin act, was allayed when he tried to enter and she winced. “Ooh,” she moaned, “ooooh” and he cried “I’m sorry, Sally” but didn’t stop because he was too far gone. If she hadn’t had to keep alert, pretending to writhe with pain, she might have smiled with pleasure at this big, handsome guy grinding deeper inside her. Here she was, with her own husband on top of her who was groaning “Sally, Sally” and he was a real he-man; you could actually see muscles in his shoulders. And a college grad. A junior bank officer.
For him, it was as blissful as he’d dreamed. Finally, finally, he could touch any part of her and he did. She was like a goddess, perfectly formed, and when he caressed her, she was perfection. And from the intuitive way she moved with him he sensed that if he were careful, gentle, understanding, she would learn to like it. Love it, he prayed, love it, as he finally succeeded in deflowering her. For the first time in his life, he was on top of the world.
Wedded bliss lasted four days, happiness three weeks, and contentment another month and a half. Their illusions dissolved slowly enough that they felt no loss. By the sixth day of their honeymoon Sally began to see that Richard’s endearing shyness was less the mask of a sensitive soul than a cover-up for a personality some might call drippy.
While still on their honeymoon, Richard watched the other new husbands staring at Sally’s body. For the first few days of marriage, he accepted the stares as Sally’s due and as an endorsement of his taste. It was almost as if these men were tipping their hats to him and saying, Richard, you lucky so-and-so. You must be quite a man to land this lady. But a few of the stares became leers, and a couple of sneers.
“Maybe you should cover up a little. A shawl or something.” He suggested that before dinner on their seventh and last honeymoon night. She was wearing a breath-stealing purple dress with a big pin shaped like a daisy at the bottom of a deep-cut vee neckline.
“Oh, Richard, you’re so cute.”
“Seriously, Sally, the other women aren’t wearing such low-cut dresses, and it’s a very conservative crowd.” She reached for his hand and guided it toward her damp cleavage and they were a half hour late to dinner.
They returned on Saturday to Cincinnati, to a three-room apartment on the second floor of a sprawling white frame house twenty minutes from downtown. On Sunday, just as they were leaving to visit Carl and Anna, Richard suggested Sally take off her nail polish. It was maroon, a color suitable for automobiles but startling for fingertips, and he wanted their reunion with his parents to be as placid as possible. Sally’s index finger inched forward and traced the outline of his penis, the maroon point making larger and larger arcs. They were fifty minutes late, and Anna’s ham had brown striations where it had dried out.
After two months of marriage, Sally knew Richard was a social flop. Her fondest daydream of married life had been about entertaining; she had imagined herself holding a silver tray dotted with cheese-stuffed olives and offering it around the room to a host of bright young couples. “An olive, Biff?” “Why thanks, Sally. Don’t mind if I do.” But Richard couldn’t think of any young couples to ask over, and the only invitation they received was from his clearly unassimilated cousins for a nearly silent dinner of Zwiebelfleisch and Salzkartoffeln and a piano recital by the cousins’ nine-year-old son, an obese child with cropped blond hair whose buttocks hung over the edge of the piano stool.
Richard was disappointed too. He slowly realized Sally’s love of heavy makeup, sleazy dresses, and potent perfume had nothing to do with her being an actress; it had a great deal to do with her having bad taste and a powerful desire to excite men. His favorite daydream—taking Sally on his arm and parading to their seats at the Zoo Opera and receiving admiring nods from upper-crust Cincinnati in recognition of his fine taste in women and his obvious devotion to the arts—dissolved. He hadn’t the strength to admit to himself that he’d been conned. But his two semesters of English literature at college were sufficient to make him realize that Sally’s knowledge of serious theater was limited to knowing the titles of three Shakespearian plays, and he began to feel there was either more or less to Sally than met the eye; he wasn’t sure which.
They never spoke of their disillusionment. Indeed, for a long time they considered themselves to be in love, for they made love often. Each night after dinner—usually a Chopped Meat Surprise culled from a women’s magazine—Sally would wash and dry the dishes while Richard read the sports page to garner conversational tidbits for work the next day. Then, wordlessly, she would walk to the bedroom, massaging lotion into her hands, and he would follow. With neither smiles nor words they would undress, climb into bed, and squeeze and fondle each other for a half hour; for another quarter hour, they’d have vigorous intercourse, with Sally in whatever position Richard arranged her. He secretly referred to a marriage manual he kept in a shoebox high on a closet shelf. At last they offered each other a courteous “Good night” and fell asleep.
Sally tired easily. She was pregnant. Conception had occurred on the fifth day of their honeymoon—she had not thought it would happen so fast—and each day she grew imperceptibly heavier and wearier.
She had, after all, slept with over fifty men and, besides the one aborted pregnancy she had had while married to Nat, she had never again conceived—and she hadn’t always been careful. She had feared she had contracted one of those diseases that decompose a woman’s insides and could never have a baby. But she hoped she could. She was thirty-three—although Richard thought she was his age, twenty-six—and, as she admitted to herself, she wasn’t getting any younger. A big belly was the best marriage insurance a girl could own. And it might be fun to have a cute little thing around all day. Something to do. She was bored.
No one wanted to be her friend. The young married women in the neighborhood were a clannish lot of native Cincinnatians, and they coldly rejected her offer to drop by for coffee and a sweet roll any old time. She tried to win them over by admiring their cocker spaniels or their infants, seeking their wisdom about morning sickness. But they were laughing at her and Sally knew it. She knew they were whispering when she lounged on a blanket on the front lawn sunning herself, wearing her pink shorts and aqua halter. And they snickered when she went to the grocery to buy candy for the trick-or-treaters wearing Halloween colors: a black skirt and a cute orange fuzzy sweater. They were eating their scrawny hearts out with jealousy.
Sally knew she could be accepted into the society of coffee sippers if she became one of them—scrubbed off her makeup and wore low-heeled creep shoes. But she wouldn’t make that compromise. Rather, she kept to herself, knowing that after the baby was born she and Richard would probably be moving to a fancier neighborhood and she would meet a livelier, classier type of woman.
But meanwhile it was so dull. After years of six ass-busting shows a day, she had little to do but wash a few dishes, shove around a dustcloth and a carpet sweeper, and play with herself. She began reading for the first time in almost twenty years and enjoyed it, but books were only good for twenty minutes, a half hour a day, tops. She listened to the radio, but all the announcers sounded like her father-in-law, with their brisk Cincinnati accents and deep voices—“Ged merning, ladies. At the chime, WCPO time will be—” and she’d switch the radio off rather than hear that mirthless midwestern voice.
After her sixth month, when her stomach finally outdistanced he
r breasts, Richard stopped wanting her. The only time she could get him was if she awoke first—a rare occurrence—and dipped her hand below the waistband of his pajamas. By the time he was alert enough to make an excuse, he was too far gone to stop. Other times he said no, it might hurt the baby. But she knew the real reason was that he thought her pregnancy repulsive, that in his eyes she had gone from being a hot number to a fat, boring lump.
By the start of her ninth month, she no longer cared. Her back ached. Her nipples turned from pink to ugly brown. She was so fagged out that she went back to bed when Richard left for the bank and set the alarm for four thirty, an hour before his return. In that last month of pregnancy, Richard found himself almost unable to talk to her. He had married a glittering, charming, effusive artiste and barely nine months later was living with a cow. “Oh, my back,” she would complain. “Oh, my feet. Oh, I couldn’t make dinner; I can hardly stand up.” And her endless “Oh, Richard, can’t you invite someone over? Someone from the bank? It’s so boring.”
He returned every night with dread, afraid that in bed she’d dangle a mammoth swollen breast over his mouth and say, “How about some lovin’, lover?” Or that she’d grab him in the morning and say, “I know a nice little pot for this cucumber.” Even when he realized she no longer desired sex, the evenings were difficult because they could think of nothing to talk about. She could barely make it through the dishes without yawning or moaning. And he would sit in the quiet embrace of a wing chair reading Ohio Accountant or Modern Estate Practices until ten, when he was too sleepy to ponder how ashamed he was for the way he was treating Sally. And how ashamed he was that he had married her, married a laughingstock.